Sentosa (19 Jul 08)

6am and in the glitter of Jurong lights on the horizon and a full moon in the sky, an intrepid team was out on Sentosa to check out the seagrasses there.It's a bit of a challenge to monitor in the dark.
But in torchlight it works out fine.

This shore is narrow but has lots of Tape seagrasses (Enhalus acoroides) and Spoon seagrasses (Halophila ovalis).
So we don't have to lay out the tape. Instead, we do the random sampling method. Which is quite easy to do!
With some tips from the 'older' team members, even first timers pick up quickly. Tape seagrasses are long and to measure them, sometimes we have to double up the ruler.Here's a look at some of the Tape seagrasses there, with the team figuring them out.But the seagrasses today are rather sparse (photo above courtesy of Adeline).
This is the growths we saw in Aug last year.

Both Tape and Spoon seagrasses were rather thin today. We're not sure why. Is it seasonal? Or are there other causes?

This is why monitoring is important. As we gather data, over time, we will better understand our seagrass meadows.

We had a big team out today so Siti and Shufen set up the rest of the team to do a survey of coverage on the shore. They were super efficient and finished very quickly.

All too soon, the monitoring is done and we have a quick look around at the Sentosa shore before the tide comes in. We also hiked to the end of the shore to have a look at the pitcher plants, and Shufen shared about the Sea teak (Podocarpus) that lined the natural cliffs.

Thank you to the team who came today: Adeline, Anuj, Hannah, Kenerf, Yok Zuan, Sam, Shin Yee, Shin Yin, Yi Xin, Ayesha, Leon, Zhigang, Eva, Siti, Shufen, Wei Ling and Kevin

More photos of MORE finds on Adeline's blog and on the wildfilms blog.